no title

Top-down standards don’t aid education

Letters Policy

The Dispatch welcomes letters to the editor from readers. Typed letters of 200 words or
fewer are preferred; all might be edited. Each letter must include name, home address and daytime
phone number.
Dispatch.com also posts letters that don't make it to print in
The Dispatch.

It is odd that
The Dispatch often acknowledges the problems with top-down government planning, yet
regarding education says, “Ohio needs these stronger standards and tougher tests” for students to
compete (“Remove the uncertainty,”
Dispatch editorial, Friday).

What Ohio needs has nothing to do with what an individual student needs. Not all students can or
want to go to college, nor do they all want to work.

Why can’t we get it through our heads that individuals and groups of people can be and are
different, and setting the bar higher won’t change that?

We’ve been throwing money at schools for decades and results have been declining. We’ve toyed
with different standards and ratings for decades and that hasn’t changed things.

Top-down bureaucracy only creates a game of musical chairs for teachers and denies them time
with our kids.

There is no planning time when every five to 10 years the entire set of procedures is revamped.
The politicization of educating kids removes the say parents have in what and how their kids are
treated.

There’s everything desirable in wanting to help educate our kids. But collective imposition of a
one-size-fits-all standard that raises the bar too high will not work, and it hasn’t worked. It
just makes teachers chase their tails with procedure and creates the incentive to doctor
results.

Plus, who says there is such a crisis that Ohio or the U.S. isn’t competing? Are our economic
problems here from bad test scores or federal budget treason?

And is that like the health-care crisis that we “solved” with national health care?